Some time back a group of 15 or 16 Americans came from USA to India. They were all white, half of them women. Someone organised a meeting between them and me in Delhi.
When we sat together I mentioned in my address to them that the condition of blacks of USA was fairly good.
At this most of them vociferously disagreed ( though they were themselves all white ). I then asked them ” How many of you have read Mark Twain’s novel ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ? ”.
This is a truly great American novel, and Ernest Hemingway, himself a great novelist, often said that all American literature begins with that single novel. However it was at one time banned in some places in America because of its alleged racist slurs, particularly use of the word ‘nigger’ which is today regarded very offensive in America.
Only a few of the group said that they had read it. I then related a scene in that novel when there is an explosion, and Aunt Sally ( a middle aged character in the novel ) said on hearing about it ” My God ! Was anyone hurt ? ”. To which Huck replies ” No Ma’am, only a nigger killed ”.
Having said that I said that this indicates that before the Civil War in America ( 1861-65 ) which abolished slavery blacks were not even regarded humans, and could be even killed by their masters.
Their degradation continued for a long time even after the Civil War, with Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, frequent lynchings of blacks by the Ku Klux Klan and others, denial of voting rights, etc.
Though legally emancipated from slavery, most of them remained very poor and with little education. Racial segregation was legally upheld by the infamous decision of the US Supreme Court in Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) which laid down the devious principle of ‘separate but equal’.
As a result there was racial apartheid in America ( as in South Africa ), and there were segregated schools, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, cinema theatres, public transportation in buses and trains, housing locations, swimming pools, sports, etc. In many states ( particularly in the south ) interracial marriages were legally prohibited ( as in Nazi Germany ), and in many areas blacks were not allowed to enter, e.g. in many beaches in Florida. However, in 1954 the US Supreme Court in Brown vs Board of Education reversed the Plessy verdict, and a few years later laws made by the US Congress like the Civil Rights Act, 1964, the Voting Rights Act, 1965, the Fair Housing Act, 1968 etc considerably improved the conditions of blacks in America.
Now blacks cannot be legally discriminated against, and many of them have risen to high positions e.g. Barack Obama who became President of USA in 2009 and was reelected in 2012. Many blacks are today highly educated. Many are in the US Congress, many are successful businessmen and businesswomen, scientists, doctors, engineers, artists etc Of course there is still some prejudice and discrimination against blacks in some areas in USA, particularly in the south, and a few incidents from time to time like killing of a black man, George Floyd by a white policeman in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020 which resulted in widespread protests in America, even by whites.
However, I asked the group I was addressing, can there be any doubt that the condition of blacks has considerably improved since the days of slavery ? Today a black man who has sex with or marries a white girl will not be killed, unlike in India where for a dalit boy to fall in love with or marrying a non-dalit girl is often inviting a death sentence ( called honour killing )
Having said all this, I told the group that like people of all countries, Americans too have made mistakes in the past. But they later realised their mistakes, and rectified them. There is no doubt that America is a great country, and Americans have made great contributions in science, technology, and other fields which have benefited the whole world.
Having concluded my speech, I said ” Long live America ! ”.
The morning that Sulieman decided he had to risk the dangerous escape from Sudan’s capital with his parents, American wife and his two American children was the morning that the war found Sulieman, friends say.
In the wholesale looting that has accompanied fighting in the capital, Khartoum, a city of 5 million, a roving band of strangers surrounded him in his yard Tuesday, stabbing him to death in front of his family. Friends suspect robbery was the motive. He became one of two Americans confirmed killed in Sudan in the fighting, both dual nationals.
Authorities say the other, with ties to Denver, was caught in a crossfire. They have not released that American’s name.
Mohamed Eisa, a Sudanese doctor who practices in the Pittsburgh area, was a close colleague of Sulieman. Over the years, “sometimes I asked him, ’Bushra, what are you doing here? What are you doing in Sudan?″ Eisa recalled.
”He always says to me, ’Mohamed, listen — yes, I love living in the United States … but the United States health care system is very strong,” and one doctor more or less won’t make a difference.
Eisa said Sulieman would tell him: “In Sudan, everything I do has so much impact on so many lives, so many students and so many medical professionals.”
The sudden illness and death of Eisa’s father in Khartoum meant Eisa was in Sudan when fighting broke out. Now trying to get back to his American wife and children in the U.S., Eisa spoke late last week from Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea now crowded with Sudanese and foreigners who made the dangerous 500-mile (800-kilometer) drive from the capital in hopes of securing spots on ships leaving Sudan.
Eisa described a journey through checkpoints manned by armed men, past bodies lying in the streets, and past vehicles carrying other families killed attempting the escape route.
After evacuating all U.S. diplomats and other U.S. government personnel April 22, the U.S. conducted its first evacuation of private American citizens Saturday. It used armed drones to escort buses carrying between 200 and 300 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and others to Port Sudan.
Sudanese in their country and in the U.S. spoke of Sulieman’s killing as a special loss.
He was a well-respected colleague at the Gastroenterology Clinic and Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, hospital president Tom Clancy said. Sulieman’s older children live in Iowa.
He traveled back to Sudan several times a year with medical supplies he had collected for that country, colleagues said.
A nurse at the Iowa City clinic who declined to be identified because the nurse was not authorized to speak called him one of the best. “His love for his patients was over the top,” the nurse said. Colleagues considered him a powerhouse doctor and humanitarian, an upbeat man with an infectious laugh who populated his texts with smiley faces and cats wearing sunglasses.
In Sudan, Sulieman directed the medical faculty at the University of Khartoum and was a founder and director of a doctors’ humanitarian group, the Sudanese American Medical Association.
He would help organize and drive medicine and supplies to Sudan’s countryside, arrange rural training for midwives and help bring in cardiologists to perform surgeries for free.
His efforts continued after two Sudanese commanders who earlier had joined forces to derail Sudan’s moves toward democracy suddenly launched an all-out battle for power.
Two weeks of fighting have killed more than 500 people, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry. Doctors say fighters have abducted at least five physicians, taking them away to treat combatants.
Sulieman was one of many doctors who kept showing up at hospitals, regardless, said Dr. Yasir Elamin, a Sudanese-American doctor in Houston.
Sulieman and other doctors in Khartoum treated the wounded, delivered babies and provided other urgent care until it became too dangerous for him to leave his home.
Concern about taking his father away from needed dialysis had kept Sulieman from leaving Khartoum, colleagues said.
On Tuesday, he decided he would take his father for dialysis, then try to flee Khartoum with his family, he told friends.
The band of men surrounded him before he could leave. They plunged a knife into his chest. Fellow doctors at Khartoum’s Soba Hospital, where he had worked, were unable to save him.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby extended “deepest sympathies” to Sulieman’s family.
“For nothing. For nothing,” Eisa, his colleague in Sudan, said of Sulieman’s killing, before finally finding passage over the weekend on a ship out of Sudan.
“You know who you killed?” another Sudanese colleague, Hisham Omar, posted among Facebook tributes from the country’s medical workers, in a message aimed at the attackers who killed Sulieman.
“You killed thousands of patients,” that colleague wrote, speaking of the impact that Sulieman — one doctor — knew he had in Sudan, and all the Sudanese he would have aided in the years ahead. “You killed thousands of needy people. You killed thousands of his students.”
[ad_2]
#Killed #tragic #death #American #doctor #Sudan
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Broadly, the national survey, which is conducted biennially, revealed two important shifts in high school student demographics: Just over 49 percent of respondents identified as being part of a racial or ethnic minority group, compared to 48.9 percent in 2019 and 46.5 percent in 2017, and about 25 percent of students identified as LGBQ+, compared to just over 11 percent of students who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual in 2019 and 10.4 percent in 2017.
Researchers also asked students several questions for the first time, including how much their parents or adults at home knew about their whereabouts, how connected they felt to people at school, the stability of their housing situation, their exposure to violence outside the home and their mental health during the pandemic.
While the number of male students who said they had considered, planned or attempted suicide was stable between 2019 and 2021, females reported a significant increase in all three, with 30 percent having seriously considered suicide in the last year, 24 percent having made a suicide plan, and 13.3 percent having attempted suicide.
Black female students were more likely than white female students to report having attempted suicide, and American Indian/Alaska Native and Black male students were more likely to report having attempted suicide than white male students.
Students also reported higher rates of sexual violence and higher rates of having been forced into sex at some point in their life, with female students experiencing overall higher rates of interpersonal violence than their male counterparts.
Just under 3 percent of students said they had recently experienced unstable housing, with Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, Black and LGBQ+ students more likely to report housing insecurity than their peers.
Though the number is relatively small, those students were dramatically more vulnerable. Kids experiencing housing insecurity were three times more likely to have used illegal drugs and 19 times more likely to have injected drugs in the last month. They were also significantly more likely to have experienced physical and sexual violence.
Similarly, experiencing community violence had negative impacts on kids. Researchers found that for the 1 in 5 students who said they witnessed community violence, it was “consistently associated” with increased odds of “gun carrying, substance use, and suicide risk for both males and females and when comparing Black, White, and Hispanic students.”
There were a few bright spots.
The number of students who said they were currently using alcohol, marijuana or binge drinking was down from 2021, though about 1 in 3 still reported having used a substance in the previous 30-day period.
In the first national assessment of parental monitoring, more than 86 percent of students said that their parents or other adults in their family “know where they are going or with whom they will be all or most of the time.” Students who said their parents knew where they were going, and with who, had fewer sexual risk behaviors, less substance use, less experiences with violence, less mental health challenges, and fewer suicide attempts.
And 62 percent of kids said they felt “connected” to others at school, which also had positive impacts on their health, with a lower prevalence of poor mental health, prescription opioid misuse, experiencing forced sex, and missing school because of feeling unsafe.
[ad_2]
#portrait #American #teenagers #crisis
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host mentioned former first lady Melania Trump’s birthday, with People reporting that Trump would join her “if his schedule allows”. Kimmel noted that he was “very busy with the yelling and the golf” and that day had been sharing social media posts about his rape trial. “Such a romantic,” he added.
This week also saw news that Trump might skip the presidential debates as he doesn’t want to subject himself to Maga-hating anchors. “I bet this is gonna be like WrestleMania when he says he’s not gonna be there then in the middle of the debate he runs out on stage and hits Ron DeSantis over the head with a folding chair,” Kimmel joked.
Reports suggest that Fox News was keeping a file of dirt on Tucker Carlson and was prepared to release it if he goes after them post-firing. “What could they have on Tucker Carlson?” he speculated. “Did he once try to buy a fuel-efficient car? Does he have a collection of paintings that weren’t by Hitler?”
Kimmel said the dossier could just be “every episode of his show”.
This week also saw leaked footage of Ted Cruz talking to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, detailing a plan to overturn the election in 2020 by creating a phony commission. “What a sorry excuse for an American,” Kimmel said, adding: “Next time you go to Cancún, stay in Cancún.”
He also joked: “The only thing funnier than Donald Trump going to jail for trying to steal the election is Ted Cruz going to jail for trying to steal the election for Donald Trump.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about the “messy separation” between Tucker Carlson and Fox News.
He noted that when the Dominion settlement happened, the network “barely even mentioned it despite the fact that it was one of the biggest media scandals in recent history” and included footage of a host not knowing the settlement number. “I dunno, maybe ask around, you work there,” he said.
This time with Carlson, they just “read one vague statement” and have acted “like he never existed” despite the fact that he had a “huge following amongst racist lunatics and people who want to fuck the green M&M”.
Rumours have swirled that it might have been for some racist statements he made but Meyers joked that “firing Tucker for racism now after tolerating it for so long would be like cancelling Sesame Street because you just found out they’re puppets”.
He also mentioned the dossier that was being kept but noted that Fox keeping a file of bad intel on an employee but not firing them and only storing it up for revenge, “speaks badly of them and you”.
He added: “That’s not how HR is supposed to work.”
[ad_2]
#Jimmy #Kimmel #Ted #Cruz #excuse #American
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol brought the White House down with his surprise rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie” Wednesday night.
After a round of musical performances at the lavish state dinner, Yoon took the microphone.
“Long, long time ago,” he sang, immediately drawing shouts, applause and fist pumps from President Joe Biden. Despite asking Yoon to perform the song moments before, Biden looked around the room in apparent disbelief, pointing to the South Korean leader in approval.
[ad_2]
#Yoon #woos #White #House #American #Pie #rendition
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
British American Tobacco (BAT) has agreed to pay more than $635m (£511m) to US authorities after a subsidiary pleaded guilty to charges that it conspired to violate US sanctions by selling tobacco products to North Korea and commit bank fraud.
The tobacco sales at the heart of Tuesday’s settlement took place from 2007 to 2017 to the isolated Communist nation, according to both the company and the Justice Department. North Korea faces an array of US sanctions to choke off funding for its nuclear and ballistic missile program.
“This case and others like it do serve as a warning shot to companies,” Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general of the Justice department’s National Security Division, told a news conference.
The case represents the “single largest North Korea sanctions penalty” in Justice department history, he said.
BAT, the world’s second-biggest tobacco group, makes Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarettes.
Its annual report for 2019 said the group has operations in a number of nations that are subject to various sanctions, including Iran and Cuba, and that operations in these countries expose the company to the risk of “significant financial costs.”
In a statement, BAT said it has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice department, while one of its indirect subsidiaries in Singapore – BAT Marketing Singapore – pleaded guilty.
It also separately entered a civil settlement with the US Treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The $635.2m payment to US authorities is the total to cover the three cases, the company said.
“We deeply regret the misconduct arising from historical business activities that led to these settlements, and acknowledge that we fell short of the highest standards rightly expected of us,” the company’s CEO Jack Bowles said in a statement.
In a court filing, the Justice Department said the company also conspired to defraud financial institutions in order to get them to process transactions on behalf of North Korean entities.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is known as a chain smoker – frequently seen with a cigarette in hand in photographs in state media. A US-push for the UN security council to ban exports to North Korea of tobacco and manufactured tobacco was vetoed by Russia and China in May last year.
In addition to the settlement with British American Tobacco, the Justice Department on Tuesday also disclosed criminal charges against North Korean banker Sim Hyon-Sop, 39, and Chinese facilitators Qin Guoming, 60, and Han Linlin, 41, as part of a “multi-year scheme to facilitate the sale of tobacco to North Korea.”
From 2009 through 2019, the Justice department said they bought leaf tobacco for North Korean state-owned cigarette manufacturers and falsified documents to trick US banks into processing at least 310 transactions worth $74m that would have otherwise been blocked due to sanctions.
The government said North Korean manufacturers, including one owned by the North Korean military, were able to reap about $700m in revenue thanks to those illicit transactions.
The three defendants remain at large. The state department is offering rewards for information leading to their capture.
[ad_2]
#British #American #Tobacco #pay #635m #North #Korea #sanctions #breaches
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Peoria, Ill., saw a spike in violent crime through the pandemic that startled local leaders.
Gun violence among young people in particular was going up at a disturbing pace in a city that already had one of the highest murder rates in the country. Democratic Mayor Rita Ali needed a plan to yank the numbers back down.
She hired a new top cop two months after being sworn in in 2021 who sought to make the police more visible and opened a tip line at the beginning of 2022. The city launched a violence “interrupter” program. A community center started offering school tutoring, physical fitness classes and mentoring on how to handle conflicts without picking up a gun.
We asked these 50 mayors what they considered to be the leading causes of crime in their cities. Here’s what they told us:
15 mayors mentioned drugs or addiction
12 mayors mentioned economic inequality, poverty or lack of opportunities
Eight mayors mentioned guns or illegal firearms
Seven mayors mentioned mental health
Four mayors mentioned car theft or other types of theft
Peoria still had a high rate of gun violence last year. But shootings and homicides fell roughly 26 percent, compared to 2021, a drop Ali and other local leaders attribute to the new suite of programs.
“We’re looking block by block how we can address gun violence and really transform the situation within these hot spots,” Ali, the first Black woman elected to lead Peoria, a city 160 miles southwest of Chicago, said in an interview. “We think if we can interrupt the violence within these hot spots, that it’s going to have a collective impact within our community.”
There’s a similar scene playing out across the country. Leaders for communities of all sizes are desperate to restore the broad, steady declines in violence that preceded Covid-19. What’s happening is an experimentation with anti-crime methods that respect the protests that erupted across the nation after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. How mayors address the issue of public safety will decide their political fate, whether their cities prosper or stagnate, and to what degree their residents can live without fear for their lives or their family.
For 2023, POLITICO assembled 50 mayors — one from every state — to shine a light on the challenges their communities face and offer up the lessons they’ve learned on the job. Throughout the year, members of the inaugural Mayors Club will share their perspective on key issues that weigh on them and their peers, in both surveys and interviews. We’ll hear directly from leaders who are far from Washington’s corridors of power, representing cities and towns big and small, urban and suburban.
The first topic we asked the members of the Mayors Club about: Crime and policing.
Nearly half of the 50 mayors in The Mayors Club said public safety was the single most pressing issue in their communities. We had them rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important.
Ali and mayors all over the country are grappling with a similar surge in violence, anchored with the huge responsibility of reducing crime rates with limited money and limited power. It’s a confluence of forces that leave mayors exasperated — often feeling boxed in by a frightened public and an intractable problem.
Here these mayors will discuss their search for solutions to many of the same problems: Understaffed police departments facing low morale — and a public uneasiness with the people hired to protect them. A steady flow of illegal guns. Inflamed and inaccurate rhetoric. State lawmakers who get in their way. And, of course, insufficient funds.
“It’s a very volatile situation,” Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, a Democrat, said of crime in his city. “We can have a very safe month, then you can have a mass shooting and the next month is challenging.”
Just three mayors we surveyed said their constituents were not concerned about crime.
33 were a little or somewhat worried
The majority of the Mayors Club said their concerns about crime aligned with their residents’ — and a quarter reported being more worried.
2
Less worried about crime
36 were as worried about crime as their constituents
Mayors Club members believe their constituents have a mostly accurate view of crime rates in the communities. We had them rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not at all accurate and 10 being completely accurate.
Louisville, Ky., Mayor Craig Greenberg, a Democrat, campaigned on combating gun violence, and a few months into his tenure he’s trying to fulfill that promise. It’s an issue that became deeply personal for him — and predates this week’s shooting less than a mile from City Hall: He survived a shooting at his campaign headquarters last year when a candidate for city council fired several rounds before a door was closed and barricaded. No one was injured but a bullet grazed the sweater Greenberg was wearing.
A few weeks into office, Greenberg announced a new plan unique to Kentucky: Guns seized by the police department would be disabled before being turned over to the state. Their firing pins would be removed and a label added saying that the gun may have been used in the killing of a child or to commit other homicides in Louisville. Kentucky law mandates that all forfeited guns must be auctioned, a requirement Greenberg said is “dangerous and absurd” because it allows for the weapons to be recirculated.
“There are thousands and thousands of guns in our possession we are going to be rendering inoperative,” Greenberg said in an interview before the downtown bank shooting that left at least four people dead on Monday. “We believe it’s important to do everything we can to continue to reduce gun violence.”
Greenberg, as mayor of Kentucky’s largest city, is likely setting himself up for a legal challenge to this workaround as well as a confrontation with the conservative state legislature behind the decades-old law. And proceeds from the auctions go toward buying equipment like body armor and tasers for police departments.
The Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police opposes the mayor’s plan and said it “will have far reaching ramifications for police and sheriffs departments.”
Greenberg has promised that his initiative won’t hurt funding for law enforcement.
More than 75 percent of The Mayors Club reported that they believe their constituents trust their police force. About 14 percent were neutral.
39
Strongly agree or agree
Strongly disagree or disagree
4
7 mayors said they were neutral
More than 90 percent of the Mayors Club said they would feel comfortable approaching their police chief to talk about their constituents’ complaints.
47
Strongly agree or agree
No mayors said they were neutral
Mayors told POLITICO they are consumed with figuring out how to keep guns off the streets — and they’re facing new challenges all the time.
In Lancaster, Penn., Mayor Danene Sorace said the police department has discovered an uptick in ghost guns — untraceable firearms that can be bought online or assembled at home using a 3D printer. A recent federal report found that the use of ghost guns has risen by more than 1,000 percent since 2017.
“As a mayor, you feel that you have no sense of control over these things, especially given the climate around guns in our country and the lack of support for law enforcement to help stem the tide of illegal guns,” Sorace, a Democrat, said in an interview. “It’s really frustrating.”
In Columbia, S.C., Mayor Daniel Rickenmann is in the process of setting up a new anti-gun violence office, an effort he imagines will consolidate resources and deploy a coordinated response across city agencies. Rickenmann, a Republican, has sparred with the city council over funding, arguing that Columbia — which experienced more shootings in 2021 than any year on record — needs a central hub dedicated to the issue.
Some council members have balked at the price tag, which is estimated at more than $800,000 in federal funds over three years.
Rickenmann also wants to see the state legislature, ruled by a Republican supermajority, pass some gun restrictions while also preserving the right to own a firearm.
“We’ve got to show people you’ve got to be responsible,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think we should take away the opportunity for people to own a firearm … but it doesn’t mean you can take it to the mall.”
He added: “I don’t think the intent was that everything is a free-for-all, and I do think we’ve got to have some boundaries and restrictions.”
An increasing number of cities across the country are rolling out violence interruption initiatives — programs that send individuals out onto the streets to deescalate the potential for crimes before they occur. These interrupters often have a criminal record and relationships with gang members after following that life themselves. Their salaries are paid for by a combination of federal and local funding, depending on the city.
In Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin is bringing the city’s interrupters into the hospital by sending workers to the bedside of gunshot victims admitted to the trauma department.
“What we want is not only for that victim to survive, what we want is for them not to retaliate,” Woodfin, a Democrat, said.
But these interrupter programs have run into problems getting off the ground, mainly with building the trust of law enforcement and community members and convincing those leaders to spend significant sums. It’s difficult for advocates of these efforts to prove they prevented crimes that never occurred and the interrupters can sometimes face tremendous risk.
In Baltimore, which has had a violence interrupter program since 2007, three workers employed on behalf of the city’s Safe Streets initiative were recently shot and killed on the job over an 18-month period. One of those men was Dante Barksdale, the director of Safe Streets and a close friend of Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott, a Black man who grew up in the Park Heights neighborhood, a predominantly low-income area with high crime rates.
Following the murders, Baltimore’s leaders faced questions about the program’s risks and whether there are better approaches.
“The day that [Barksdale] died is one of the hardest days of my life as an elected official,” said Scott, who got choked up when talking about his death. But he said Barksdale was committed to the effort.
Barksdale would tell Scott: “We’ve got to go deeper. We’ve got to do more of it, not less, because it’s necessary and it works.”
Scott is pushing a comprehensive public safety strategy that not only relies on law enforcement but also programs like Safe Streets and the recently reimagined Group Violence Reduction Strategy that directs job training, drug counseling, housing and behavioral health support to at-risk individuals.
“When you think about gun violence as a disease or a cancer, you have to cure the whole cancer, not just one symptom,” Scott said.
What do you wish state lawmakers better understood about crime in your community?
“Police officers need more mental health support and services. No one really prepares us for if there’s a homicide in the city or what happens when you lose an officer.”
— Maria Rivera, Central Falls, Rhode Island
“We still struggle in Iowa with some of the small drug offenses. Marjuana is not legalized here for recreational use and [we have] limited medical use. There’s not any real agreement. They’re just not open to that conversation right now.”
— Brad Cavanagh, Dubuque, Iowa
“[Fentanyl] is new, very powerful, extremely addictive and very deadly. We need state laws addressing the people directly dealing that poison.”
— Todd Gloria, San Diego, California
Members of The Mayors Club said it is crucial to encourage law enforcement to embrace community policing tactics: being more visible within their cities and towns and directing nonviolent 911 calls to mental health professionals. That approach, they believe, will help build trust between law enforcement and residents.
In few places has that mandate been more difficult than in Tacoma, Wash., where Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man, died during an arrest in 2020. The incident sparked a crisis for the city and state, pulling in the governor and leading Mayor Victoria Woodards to immediately call for the removal and prosecution of the four police officers on the scene after video footage of the altercation was released showing the officers choking Ellis and repeatedly tasing him. Three of the officers are awaiting trial on murder and manslaughter charges. The Tacoma Police union has called the prosecution’s case a “witch hunt” and that the officers acted “in accordance with the law.”
Woodards, a Democrat and the city’s first Black mayor, said she found the Ellis killing and its fallout “devastating” as she dealt with her own emotions about “representing the system that has now hurt my community.”
“Mayors have to be really careful. … I’ve got to call out what’s wrong but I also have to balance that with still saying that those who are still left, those who are waking up every day fighting crime, still have to be honored in the work that they’re doing,” she said. “It’s a tightrope. It’s not easy.”
A majority of the Mayors Club said they intended to spend more money on their police department this year than last year.
29
More money than was spent last year
16 said the same amount as last year
When given three choices for how to spend a hypothetical $500,000 public safety budget surplus, nearly 70 percent said they’d hire social workers.
11 mayors said create/hire more police officers
34 mayors said hire social workers to handle nonviolent policing duties such as mental health issues
Five mayors said invest in drug rehabilitation programs
When offered several choices for how to spend a broader hypothetical $500,000 budget surplus, more than one-third said they would spend the money on housing.
Mayors shared deep concerns about the quality of life for police officers, who they say are experiencing low morale amid the national discourse over policing and mental health issues associated with their dangerous jobs.
And law enforcement resources are stretched thin, an issue exacerbated by recruitment challenges.
“People just don’t want to be police officers and that’s a big challenge,” Dubuque, Iowa, Mayor Brad Cavanagh, a Democrat, said in an interview. “Recruiting and hiring is our biggest concern right now.”
The Dubuque police department currently has 14 vacancies and no longer receives a comparable amount of applicants for open positions that it used to.
“It’s a challenge when you have a national narrative where people are not as supportive of the police, and for some really legitimate reasons,” he said of the police department’s personnel setbacks. “There’s been some terrible things that have happened at the hands of police officers in the United States. And it leads to a larger discussion that doesn’t attract somebody to the profession.”
LONG TERM POLICY AMBITIONS
One-third of the mayors in the club reported drugs and addiction as the leading cause of crime in their communities. Nearly a quarter cited economic inequality, poverty and a lack of opportunities.
Some mayors are hoping to address a few of these root causes with a greater focus on lifting people out of poverty or helping those struggling with substance abuse.
In Louisville, Ky., the city is exploring how to create a universal pre-kindergarten program.
The city of San Diego is lobbying the California Legislature to crack down on dealers of illicit fentanyl, who prey on the homeless population.
In Birmingham, Ala., the city has provided more than $3 million in college tuition assistance to more than 800 high school students.
Here is what some mayors said they would change about their police department — if there were no political blowback:
new patrol cars
more officers living inside city limits
ending qualified immunity
proactive in citing violators
cameras in public areas
hire a full time psychologist
terminate bigoted officers
more social workers
All these efforts are intended to get at systemic issues mayors believe may meet long term policy goals — and could be better realized with the support of state and federal government and more money.
“We’re dealing with the symptom and not the underlying cause,” Democratic Santa Fe, N.M., Mayor Alan Webber said.
What do you wish state lawmakers better understood about crime in your community?
“We need more tools at the local level to enforce the illegal trafficking of guns in our city. The legislature here in Ohio has undermined home rule for us as mayors to cut down on guns. That plays a large driver in the homicides we see across the state.”
— Justin Bibb, Cleveland, Ohio
“What’s happening right now in 2023 with the proliferation, the ease and access to guns in urban cores across America is extremely reminiscent of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 80’s.”
— Randall Woodfin, Birmingham, Alabama
“One of the things the state needs to recognize is that at the same time we want more officers and more response to things that are crimes, we want more prevention and intermediation and diversion for things that are social problems not criminal problems. It’s underfunded, it’s harder to explain to the public, it is less politically popular than being ‘tough on crime.’”
— Alan Webber, Santa Fe, New Mexico
[ad_2]
#truth #crime #American #cities #asked #mayors
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
America’s mayors are on the frontlines of crises hitting cities across the country, finding themselves consumed with fighting drug epidemics, homelessness and the devastating effects of climate change.
Yet mayors aren’t often heard from on the national stage. Until now.
Welcome to POLITICO’s Mayors Club, a first-of-its-kind roundtable of 50 mayors, one from each state. We convened these mayors to tell us how they’re tackling the issues their own voters are demanding action on – and what they’re pushing state and national leaders for. Mayors – regardless of their party, the size of their population or their location – are judged on some of the most mundane aspects of government, like filling potholes and plowing snow. But they’re also charged with navigating some of the most complex, like tax and real estate policy.
Mayors are also often more nimble than their counterparts in higher levels of government, possessing the flexibility to experiment with policy and try out new potential solutions to persistent problems.
These mayors are from small towns like Gibbon, Neb., (pop. 1,889) and big cities like San Diego (pop. 1.38 million). They are Republicans and Democrats and independents. They are new to politics at 23 years old or in their seventh term in office at 68. They include military veterans, a social worker, a surgeon, a son of immigrants — and many mark a historic “first”: the first woman, or first openly gay person, or first person of color to lead their communities.
Throughout the year, we will survey and interview these leaders on a variety of key issues plaguing cities and towns across the country — and what solutions mayors are rolling out. You’ll hear more of their stories as the project unfolds.
Our Mayors Club marks a commitment from this newsroom to look beyond Washington and dig into state and local policy. Stay tuned for more.
[ad_2]
#POLITICOs #Mayors #Club #roundtable #American #mayors
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Being a mayor means being a manager, a problem-solver, a coach, an inspirational speaker, a people person and a punching bag. Anything and everything going on in town can wind up on your desk. And while you may have allies on your city council or in your state legislature, a mayor is the one most accountable to everyday people when something goes awry.
The 50 mayors we will survey throughout 2023 represent big cities and small towns, but many face the same challenges: recovering from Covid-era business shutdowns and remote schooling, stubborn spikes in crime, growing homelessness and a mounting affordability crisis. These mayors will bring us in on what they’ve learned on the job and what still vexes them. We will hear from this inaugural class of the Mayors Club through both surveys and interviews.
Here, you can learn about who they are in their own words — edited for length and clarity — and see their responses to our very first question: What keeps you up at night? The answers ranged from gun violence to homelessness to drugs.
This is what they had to say:
[ad_2]
#American #mayors #biggest #issues #facing #cities
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
It remains to be seen how comfortable the House GOP can be as a home for Steel and Kim, emigres from South Korea whose friendship long predates their service in Congress. These days, both represent districts that Democrats have targeted in recent campaigns.
Steel acknowledged that the women’s entry into the congressional Republican ranks hasn’t always been smooth.
“A lot of people, the first year, they couldn’t recognize the differences between Kim and me,” she recalled. “I had to mention that I’m taller than her, I have longer hair than her.”
Despite exit polls showing the Asian American electorate generally tilting leftward, Kim’s anti-communist rhetoric has helped her connect with conservative Asian American voters in her Orange County-area district — particularly Vietnamese Americans, who tend to lean more to the right. House Republican leaders, eager to diversify the party’s ranks, have pointed to Kim and Steel as valuable messengers and potential models.
What has worked for Kim in her district hasn’t quite translated into national success for the GOP, though.
Republicans still haven’t been able to break through among Asian American voters in other key races, with the fast-growing voting bloc still swinging decisively towards Democrats during the last election in swing states from Georgia to Nevada.
And Kim is plainly still finding her own way in Washington, too, even as Speaker Kevin McCarthy predicts she could rise to become a committee chair or senator.
In an interview, Chu, the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said Kim had initially expressed some interest in joining the all-Democratic group. Membership in CAPAC might have functioned as a useful platform for a junior lawmaker with hopes of closing the gap between the Republican Party and Asian Americans — and between the U.S. and East Asia.
But Kim ultimately opted against joining, Chu said, after realizing she would have been outvoted by the group’s executive board on any major decision.
Wu reported from Washington.
[ad_2]
#Korean #American #Republican #educate #party #U.S
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
